In 1946 Donald Thomson (1946: 157) noted that 'very little has been recorded of the derivation and use of personal names among the Australian Aborigines'.Despite the significance that Australian Indigenous people in general give to the meaning and use of proper names of people and places and to the action of naming in cosmogonic events, with some exceptions this neglect continues today.lThomson explains this dearth of research by the secrecy and the sacredness of proper names and toponyms which derive from their ancestral associations and by the rules of avoiding names in everyday life.However, like Keith Basso (1988: 103), I am inclined to suggest that this neglect is the reflection of the prevailing preoccupation of anthropologists and linguists with the semantico-referential meanings and functions of names and language rather than with the culturally shared notions and images all names evoke, provoke and embody in the creative dialogue that people establish and continuously renew with counily.As Heidegger argues for language (197la:192-l93): in order to explore the meaning and significance of Yolngu' names it is necessary to explain them more comprehensively than considering them as simple expressions of internal feelings and thoughts, as mere representations of reality, as vehicles by which people communicate, address each other, or in Levistraussian tenus, as a means by which people classify the world and order themselves within it (see Levi-Strauss 1966:161-190).If with Heidegger I suggest that 'language speaks' beyond expression and representation, my concern in this paper is to ethnographically explore what Yolngu names speak of, that is, what culturally shared images and notions they reveal while saying very little (Basso 1988:103).As in other regions of Indigenous Australia, Yolngu names -whether they be of individuals,The following authors have given some attention to the significance of names: Hart (1930); Goodale ( 1980); Dussart (1988); Schebeck (1968); Stanner (1937); von Stunner (1978); Williams (1986); and more recently Biddle (2000) and McKnight (1999).2 North-east Arnhem Land extends approximately from Cape Stewart in the west to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the east and from the Wessel Islands in the north as far south as the Koolatong River nOlth of Blue Mud Bay and includes the major settlements of Maningrida, Milingimbi, Ramingining, Gapuwiyak, Galuwin'ku and Yirrkala (see map).Yolngu (human being) is the tenn used by north-east Arnhem Landers to refer to themselves in relation to their western neighbours of central Arnhem Land.By extension the telm Yolngu is used to mean'Aboriginal or Black people' in contrast to Balanda, 'non-Aboriginal, White people'.L. HerclIs, F. Hodges and J. Simpson, cds, The Land is a iVlap: placenames ofIndigenous origin in Australia, 87-102.
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